Institutions: The Ghost in the Machine

CONTENTS

Corina Angheloiu

The Shape of Things to Come

Mino Chen

Ambiguous City, Diverse Living

Catarina De Almeida Brito

A Royal Nature

Claudia Fragoso

London’s Transport Defined as an Institution

Nils-Erik Fransson

The Urban Family is a Multifaceted Entity

Sahra Hersi

Albertopolis

Ourania Kondyli

Existential Uncertainty

Daniel Masterman

Tactics

Navi Masutomi

Landscape Rehabilitation Clinic

Juris Platacis

Metamorphosis of Asceticism

Nada Tayeb

Wasting Time

Cherng-Min Teong

The City, The Salt Institute & The Commons

Rhys Williams

FINANCIAL TIMES/fuzzy futures

*The juxtaposition of the extinct dodo and the regenerative phoenix is inherent to the new myth that Darwin introduced into the narrative of the post-war College. Reborn among the ashes of the Blitz, Darwin’s RCA would be regenerated through an infusion of new academic blood and a new style of learning through practical interaction.

This vision ensured the College’s survival, repositioning it towards training designers for industry, and the vibrant, collaborative breeding ground of artists and designers that we recognise today Myth-making, an established tradition at the College, is reinforced as an invented tradition of historical romanticism, which includes the Oxbridge-inspired Senior Common Room and the elaborate Convocation ceremony.

This annual event is eloquently described by RCA Council member and biographer Fiona MacCarthy as an ‘invention involving formal gowns and academic hoods, flourishes of trumpets and a ceremonial silver mace […] featuring a dodo at one end and a triumphant phoenix on the other’.

The emblem on the cover is an inversion of the mythical image Robin Darwin imposed whilst principle.

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: INSTITUTIONAL FORMS AND URBAN LOGICS Punctuating the endless space of the urban are its institutions: vessels of civic organization that orient us in the isotropic fabric of the city. Until recently, the institution and its host building have been inextricably linked. Understood as one and the same, these architectural artefacts have guided our reading of the territorial city, giving body and inflection to all that surrounds them. With the ambiguous condition of the contemporary city; shifting technology, fluid boundaries, the slippery nature of governance and the larger processes of urbanization, these two incarnations of the institution – material and organisational – have drifted apart. ADS9 works within this ambiguity. Our interpretations, definitions and position on the contemporary institution are deliberately broad allowing for the testing of spatial consequences and forming the lens through which to discuss the agency of architecture.

THE SALON: ARCHIVE OF THE INSTITUTION Our multiple readings of the institution, from the assured to the fragile, creative to the repressive, the antagonistic to the functional, have been brought to the table for weekly debate and discussion in the ADS9 Salon. This collective research platform explores all the possible interpretations, tactics, forms and manifestations of the institution and their social, political, economic and spatial relevance for the city. This forms the foundation of our proposals and frames ADS9’s presentation for the WIP show. Our work is presented alongside a salon hang, a selection from the RCA’s collection, archive and student work, as acknowledgement of the institution that supports and surrounds our efforts and as reflection upon the ideas that have developed within the shifting walls of their host, the RCA.

*** TUTORS : Beth Hughes, Alison Crawshaw, Ryan Neiheiser STUDENTS : Second Year: Corina Angheloiu, Nils-Eryk Fransson, Ourania Kondyli, Daniel Masterman, Nabi Masutomi, Nada Tayeb, Cherng-Min Teong, Rhys Williams First Year: Catarina Brito, Chen Chen, Claudia Fragoso, Sahra Hersi, Juris Platacis THANKS - Chris Fabrizio Ballabio, Kivanc Basak, Ian Boal, Matthew Butcher , Selva Gürdoan Meric Oner, November Paynter, Neil Parkinson, Oriel Prizeman, Jo Stockham, Fenna Haakma Wagenaar, Nazli Unsal

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME SHIFTING WORLDVIEWS In 1966, Stewart Brand started a campaign for the release of satellite images of the Earth that he believed NASA was in possession of. One of them, known as the Blue Marble became the cover of the Whole Earth Catalogue, project which examined the planetary perspective on the world as a whole. A basic trope of the Anthropocene view of the world, the image was appropriated in two distinct ways: on one hand, by green movements searching for the connection between man and nature within the cosmic unity, while on the other hand it was used as anti-Soviet propaganda, marking the beginning of the lifestyle industry which ultimately commodified the original values and attitudes as marketable goods.

The famous images taken by the Apollo 8 and Apollo 17 missions constitute a philosophical paradox of viewing the whole Earth system from the outside for the first time, while simultaneously being part of it. This signified a change of direction, with the outwards-driven frontier imaginary folding back on itself in a 180 degrees turn. This moment in time marks a conceptual shift on how humanity perceived itself. In a process similar to the one of individuation, the Anthropocene came to embody the realisation that over the last centuries humankind has put processes in motion that led to developments for which we no longer have standards by which to judge them - hence becoming itself a natural force.

Coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in the 1980s, the Anthropocene is a new debated geological era where the world system dominates and impacts the Earth system (notion derived from cybernetics) at new and unprecedented scales and intensities, opening up new divisions of time and space. Adding to the debate, Félix Guattari argues that the traditional environmentalist perspectives obscure the complexity of the relationship between humans and their natural environment through the dualistic separation of human (cultural) and nonhuman (natural) systems.[1] These conditions are understood today through the notion of neo-ecology: a new “natural state”, a milieu created by people and machines that has replaced virgin nature as the habitat of the human being. Neo-ecology “no longer knows subjects nor objects, but only actors: everything is linked to everything else”.[2] The arising overlaps question the political possibilities in this new communality between human being and machine, growing urbanisation, extinction of the species and climate change. So far, institutionalised knowledge production has been carried 6 out in disciplines that have established their own methodologies and ways of approaching the world, while the organisational and physical manifestations of the institution dutifully followed. However, the shift in field conditions over the last 300 years has led to a rapid reformation of cause and effect, which now requires new forms of interrogation, driven by material interconnections and processes.

Historically, large-scale spatial interventions such as railway projects or the global submarine cables created the need for an administrative authority comparable to the one of the state, becoming the operating field of nested forms of sovereignty, where domestic and transnational jurisdictions collide. Infrastructure space is thus the medium of what could be referred as extrastatecraft - ‘a portmanteau describing the often undisclosed activities outside of, in addition to, and sometimes in partnership with statecraft.’[3] INSTITUTIONS OF EXTRASTATECRAFT For many, the first meeting of the International Telegraph Union in 1865 may only seem an obscure historical footnote. Noted as “the first international agreement concerning most of Europe since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648”[4] , it was intended to prevent telecommunications misunderstandings which were often the cause of war. Rather than the ceremonial procedure of signing a peace treaty, the delegates at the convention had the more practical task of regulating a number of technological incongruences. Keller Easterling argues that such infrastructure has been often portrayed through several 5 meta narratives: as an apparatus of nation-building, closely tied to the state and the military; as the torch-bearer of economic liberalism, or as a universal platform for rationalising global exchange.[5] The ITU delegates can be thus seen as a type of emerging power at the end of the nineteenth century, advocating the idea that international issues are a matter of nationstates coming together. This understanding of governance formed the basis of what we understand today through the notion of intergovernmental organisations (IGO).

Currently, the agency and relevance of these institutions is being challenged by the growing complexity and interconnectedness of the issues they originally set out to address, alongside questions about fairness, accountability, justice and allocation.

is ‘beneficial – e.g. increasing responsiveness – or conflictive, thus reducing the system’s effectiveness and fairness.’[6] The increasing fragmentation of global environmental governance can be seen as an institutional mirror image of the material complexity inherent to the Anthropocene and has seen multiple pleas for drastic change. The 2012 State of the Planet Declaration, called for ‘fundamental reorientation and restructuring of national and international institutions.’[7] It is fundamental, the Declaration continues, ‘to overcome barriers to progress and to move to effective Earth-system governance.

Governments must take action to support institutions and mechanisms that will improve coherence, as well

as bring about integrated policy and action across the social, economic and environmental pillars.’ [8] FUTURE STORYTELLING The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) embodies the web of intricate conditions so far exposed. Set up in 1988 by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), it is comprised of representatives of 195 governments who peer review scientific literature from across the world. Despite having won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, limitations to the current organisational model have surfaced. The underlying linear model of policymaking, which assumes that more knowledge and scientific proofs will lead to better political decisions, is in direct conflict with the fact that governments pursue different, if not opposing goals. This puts the IPCC in a gridlock situation, further slowed by the time-consuming scientific review process required, and creates a serious shortcoming in a body that is widely regarded as the ultimate authority in the field.

Despite the interconnectedness of the issues it tries to address in the 21st century, the IPCC follows the same organisational, physical and institutional practices as the International Telegraph Union.

From an expansionary modernist world-view to contemporary knowledge production and action on climate change through Earth-Systems modelling, how can international organisations deal with the implications of the Anthropocene?

The reshaping of the present-day global governance architecture, driven by the national desire of securing resources versus the question of global agency in addressing planetary challenges, is marked by shifting mandates of international organisations, institutional interactions and overlaps. The degree of these changes has brought some scholars to ask if we are seeing the fragmentation of global governance architectures, and whether or not that fragmentation

CORINA ANGHELOIU

FOOTNOTES 1. Félix Guattari, Remaking Social Practices. In: Genosko, Gary (Hg.) (1996): The Guattari Reader. Oxford, Blackwell, S. 262-273.

2 . h tt p : / / w w w. h k w. d e / e n / p r o g r a m m / p r o j e k t e / 2 014 / anthropozaenprojekt_ein_bericht/enzyklopaedie/neo_oekologie.php.

Accessed Jan 2015.

3. Keller Easterling, Extrastatecraft : The Power of Infrastructure Space (Brooklyn: Verso Books, 2014), pg. 15.

4. Ibid., pg. 55.

5. Ibid., pg. 138.

6 - 8. Co-chair of the Planet under Pressure Conference (2012) State of the Planet Declaration. London, 26–29 March 2012. Supported by the Conference Scientific Organizing Committee.

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THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

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“How are we supposed to react when faced with a piece of news like this one from Le Monde on Tuesday, May 7, 2013: “At Mauna Loa, on Friday May 3, the concentration of CO2 was reaching 399. 29 ppm”?”

Bruno Latour, Agency at the time of the Anthropocene

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From the formal and universal intergovernmental bodies characteristic for the 20th century UN system, to an increasing number of smaller country clubs or subnational initiatives such as the Alliance of Small Island States, the notion of the Anthropocene blurs the distinction between the public and private sector. Hence, the increasing fragmentation of global environmental governance can be seen as an institutional mirror image of the material complexity inherent to the Anthropocene.

This implicitly poses the question: how can institutional responses be pre-emptively designed in the face of interconnected phenomena such as climate change, species extinction and rapidly growing urbanisation?

Which are the institutional structures and subsequent modus operandi for the Anthropocene?

IMAGE LIST 1. Whole ETart Catalogue, 1968 cover.

2. Untitled, Keith Collie, 1973. Royal College of Art Photographic Record of Student Work 3. Ibid.

4. Anonyme Skulpturen, Berndt and Hilla Becher, 1981 - 1983.

5. Sea Change, Michael Marten, 2003.

6. Manufactured Landscapes, Edward Burtynsky, 2006.

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: URBAN LOGICS & INSTITUTIONAL FORMS

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CORINA ANGHELOIU

GRIMSBY

LOUTH

YORKSHIRE WILDLIFE TRUST

LINCOLNSHIRE WILDLIFE TRUST

OUTER SEA REACH

SKEGNESS

LINCOLNSHIRE WILDLIFE TRUST

THEDDLETHORPE GAS TERMINAL LINKS

ROYAL AIRFORCE FIRING AREA

LINCS CENTRICA OFFSHORE WIND FARM

GAS FIELD EXTRACTION AREA

GAS FIELD EXTRACTION AREA

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Background false-color composite satelite image LANDSAT 2011

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Intensity of flooding

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Territorial waters 12 marine miles Current land boundary

Territorial waters 6 marine miles

TERRITORIAL BORDERS

CENTRICA Offshore farms Port Authority Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

RAF Firing practice areas Gas Field Extraction areas Gas links

INSTITUTIONAL & INFRASTRUCTURAL JURISDICTIONS

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LEGEND

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME INSTITUTIONS OF THE ANTHROPOCENE

BOSTON

ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS

ROYAL AIRFORCE FIRING AREA

WALPOLE SUBSTATION

THE WASH

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ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS

HUNSTANTON

ROYAL SOCIETY FOR THE PROTECTION OF BIRDS

CENTRICA OFFSHORE WIND FARM (UNDER CONSTRUCTION)

AMBIGUOUS CITY · DIVERSE LIVING Mr Reichmann left an enduring mark on the capital.

With its landmark tower (One Canada Square) topped by a blinking pyramid, Canary Wharf relocated the centre of gravity of London’s financial core. Reichmann was arguably one of the fi rst to understand that the east was where London’s future lay. He was determined to make Canary Wharf work.

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By 1991, Olympia & York had built 4.5million sq ft of offices at Canary Wharf but also spent close to £2bn on infrastructure. When a severe recession struck, the world’s biggest developer was bankrupted.

Reichmann eventually reclaimed control of Canary Wharf after acquiring the site with former backers of Olympia & York. A new company, Canary Wharf Group (CWG), was created in 1997.

1. MARGARET THATCHER & BIG BANG “She was a superb prime minister, the best peacetime leader of the 20th century… Th atcher saved Britain from economic and cultural catastrophe.” – Allister Heath, the editor of City AM.

Baroness Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990. One of the key moments of Baroness Thatcher’s career was the Big Bang in October 1986 when her controversial deregulation of the UK’s stock exchange and financial services sector took place. Th is in turn changed banking forever. Wide-sweeping reforms were introduced in an attempt to re-establish London as a financial centre and make it more competitive in an increasingly global market. The Big Bang became one of the Thatcher government’s most recognized and famous reform programmes.

The City that exists today was forever changed by her policy. It allowed a new breed of workers into the City, and the development of Canary Wharf brought a second physical financial centre to London. The effects of the Big Bang were dramatic; the economy grew and flourished, ensuring Britain’s position as a global financial capital.

2. CANARY WHARF & CANARY WHARF GROUP West India Dock was built to counteract theft, smuggling and congestion in the Thames. It was the fi rst enclosed dock in London, constructed specifically for handling cargo. The dock was considered as something of a fortress. The success of the West India Dock saw a raft of other docks built, including the London Dock in Wapping, the East India Dock at Blackwall, St Katharine Dock, Surrey Docks, Millwall Dock and finally The Royal Docks.

During World War II, the West India Dock was heavily bombed, crippling the infrastructure. There was a brief resurgence of the docks during the 1950s; however by 1980, due to containerization, these docks were empty and abandoned. Goods were previously brought into the UK by small ships and then unloaded by hand. But from the 70s onwards, most goods were carried in shipping containers. The establishment of air cargo as a primary mode of transport further exacerbated the decline of the docks. Today the West India Dock is the site of Canary Wharf.

The transformation into the beacon of modern day capitalism was the built manifestation of Thatcher’s Big Bang.

The Canary Wharf Group can be seen as the legacy of Thatcher’s government. Mr Reichmann was quoted as being told by Thatcher: “you are the only developer in the world that could do Canary Wharf.”

unit of people that is structured and manages the financial office properties in Canary Wharf, whilst, collecting funds from other financial institutions in Canary Wharf.

It provides for 3,100 residential units, 240,000 sqm of commercial office, 31,000sqm of shops, cafes and restaurants, 3.6 hectares of interconnected public spaces. Phase I is to include 884 residential units in 3 buildings designed by Herzog & de Meuron and Stanton Williams totalling 100,379 sqm; and 2 office buildings totaling over 20,000 sqm designed by Allies and Morrison.

Home, a destination for people, both physically and spiritually. Th is is especially relevant in the case of Canary Wharf. The workers there live a fast paced life, facing the pressures of work. Therefore, leisure, entertainment and rest, play an important role. Will the big architecture of Canary Wharf be suitable?

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Is the Canary Wharf Group an institution?

What is an institution? The dictionary defines an institution as: an institution is an established organization; a place where an organization takes care of people for a usually long period of time; a custom, practice, or law that is accepted and used by many people.

What is an organization? A social unit of people that is structured and managed to meet a need or to pursue collective goals. All organizations have a management structure that determines relationships between the different activities and the members, and subdivides and assigns roles, responsibilities, and authority to carry out different tasks.

What is a financial organization? An institution (public or private) that collects funds (from the public or other institutions) and invests them in financial assets.

Every Society has basic needs. These needs have to be satisfied for a better day- to-day life. Social institutions are like social moulds, which are established for carrying out basic functions and to help to establish a collective image of behaviour. These institutions come in to existence for satisfying the needs of an individual. Even though every institution carries out a specific function, it is not entirely independent.

Every institution has to use various resources for its fulfi llment. The different institutions of society are codependent on each other to supplement the delivery of goods and services to society. When one institution changes drastically, all the other institutions are in turn affected.

The Big Bang deregulation of financial services in London had radically changed the way merchant banks operated. Instead of small and traditional office based buildings, the demand for a large floor, open plan space which could be used as a trading floor was the primary need. The main purpose of the Canary Wharf Group is to satisfy this demand for these new forms of financial institutions that satisfy the results of the Big Bang – a new financial ideology. The CWG transformed the once derelict 97 acre dockland site into one of the world’s most sought after office and retail space. – Canary Wharf.

Therefore, the definition of Canary Wharf Group is of a financial organization, which is an established social

MINO CHEN

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3. WOOD WHARF There is no doubt that Canary Wharf is a successful example of a business district. However, the demands of other business sectors are now changing. CWG is planning to address this change in the direction with their next phase of development – Wood Wharf.

The Wood Wharf development is the idea of a creating a high capacity development with new homes, offices and other commercial uses within the Canary Wharf Town Centre and Isle of Dogs Opportunity Area, in accordance with the strategic objectives for this highly accessible location. The Masterplan for the demands of a residential island ? According to the Canary Wharf Ward Profi le, 41.6%,are single and 49% are privately renting – currently the people in Canary Wharf are independent and live a tetherless life. Will Wood Wharf be a place to form a community, a place where people will have the desire to stay longer?

In contrast, Canary Wharf Group seems to be planning to develop Wood Wharf as a new face of Canary Wharf. How can a new diversity of living be created that challenges the monoculture of the existing model?

Will Wood Wharf be residential enclave, the reciprocal counterpart to compliment its fi nancial counterpart, or can a new more diverse and integrated condition be created?

FOOTNOTES 1. Margaret Thatcher supervisando el diseño de Canary Wharf, Londres 1988.

2. Canary Wharf view 3. Wood Wharf Master Plan

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: URBAN LOGICS & INSTITUTIONAL FORMS

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MINO CHEN

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AMBIGUOUS CITY · DIVERSE LIVING

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Ever since the Thatcher government’s Big Bang phase, Canary Wharf has experienced a huge transformation. What was once an enclosed dock, has now become a world famous financial centre.

With the condition of the contemporary city being ambiguous, the definition of an institution has also become ambiguous. Is the Canary Wharf Group an institution? With the demands of society changing, the Canary Wharf Group is shifting their direction towards a new residential island development – Wood Wharf.

However, is big architecture, like in Canary Wharf, still feasible in a residential place? Will Wood Wharf want to be another enclave, the reciprocal counterpart to Canary Wharf or can a new more diverse and integrated condition be created?

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IMAGE LIST 1. Wood Wharf Site Map 2. RCA Resource - Part Two: The appearance of the Work-World 3. the assumption of architecture.

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WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

A ROYAL NATURE An institution is an organisation that brings people together around a shared preoccupation, belief, or need. It can take shape according to different modes of operation and communication, and have various physical and/or digital manifestations. The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) was founded in 1804 with the intention of being a repository of all knowledge surrounding horticulture, and to develop and disseminate this discipline throughout the country. Not only is the RHS critical in terms of horticultural practice, it is also a ‘Royal’ institution - which has given it a particularly interesting role in society since its conception.

The RHS acquired its Royal prefix shortly after Prince Albert rescued it from financial crisis in the 1850s. As part of the Prince’s ambition to create Albertopolis a cultural and educational heartland vested in public interest and accessible to all - the society opened a garden in South Kensington that was at the core of the masterplan. The gardens became the anchor of the prince’s pioneering vision, cementing the RHS as a national institution of great importance, only to close at the end of the century to give way to more profitable tenants.

Despite undergoing periods of change and adaptation the RHS proclaims “the RHS has been at the forefront of horticultural practice, research and education since its foundation” although this statement has been more true sometimes more than others.

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ECONOMIC BOTANY Horticultural practice gained prominence and interest towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries at the peak of Britain’s Imperial Century. The Empire had expanded into mysterious lands and many explorers ventured into these exotic countries - India, Burma, Canada, Australia, Tanzania, among others – in quest of new natures and cultures. Horticulture was regarded as an important science/art through which to document the remote territories of the British realm. The objects, artefacts and botany gathered by explorers such as Joseph Banks (founder of the RHS) and William Hooker during their expeditions form the main collection of the RHS. This practice of collecting manmade objects fabricated from plants is called Economic Botany. To this day this collection is stored in the Royal Botanical Gardens as part of their Economic 2 Botany archives – the taxonomy of an empire. The quest to understand human use of plants and planttechnologies in day-to-day life was crucial not only to establish the British colonial success, but also for the advancement of horticultural and sociological studies.

The RHS has been vital in representing the ‘Royal Empire’ both internationally and within Britain.

One memorable event in the society’s history is the Coronation Empire Exhibition in 1937, where plants representing different parts of the Commonwealth

explorers like Banks and Hooker’s, horticulture was an essential practice in comprehending the world, a definition that seems no longer associated with the RHS. We have lost our grasp of the nature upon which our urban is founded – the mountains, valleys, rivers that run beneath our cities. We have lost the ability to understand and consider the origin and natural processes that shape and form our cities and ‘urban artefacts’.

The contemporary relevance and purpose of horticulture is ambiguous and ill-defined as reflected by the current identity of the RHS. LOOKING FORWARD

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were exhibited as a show of ‘Royal pride’. Not only is the Queen the institution’s Patron, one of its most famous events – the Chelsea Flower show - is a “regular fixture in the Royal calendar4 ”.

The close associations with the monarchy in name and presence at every major Royal event brand the society as a relic of the Empire, which calls into question its relationship and connection to the general population.

The 2000 1990 society has gardens 1980 1960 1970 1950 located in Devon, 1940 Essex, Surrey, and 1913 North Yorkshire, with paid access USING HORTICULTURE TO UNDERSTAND to the public, and DISTANT CULTURES two venues in the capital, both in West London Lawrence Hall and Lindley Hall.

Arguably the RHS’ biggest encounter with popular culture was when Lawrence Hall was used as a set for 5 movies - the most impressive ones being Alan Parker’s film of Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade’.

Today, apart from a few community projects in East London, the RHS is still commonly perceived as bourgeois, too often an anachronistic show of historic power from a bygone era aimed at the privileged classes, outdated, and disassociated from contemporary culture. This accentuates the split between the RHS and the wider population.

The question remains as to whether this is due to the institution’s ‘royalty’, or to its relegation to the status of ‘gardening club’.

CON T E M P OR A RY NATURE It seems that in today’s urban world, London especially, with its extensive range of ‘green’ spaces; nature is incorporated into our ideas of leisure rather than knowledge. Even though the science of plants exists in everything Londoners eat, the objects they own, the clothes they wear, and the city’s built environment, the significance and awareness of horticulture has been eclipsed by the pressures of contemporary existence. Historically for

CATARINA DE ALMEIDA BRITO

A century after Joseph Bank’s first explorations, the RHS claims status as “the largest gardening charity in the world”. This is a source of pride, and gives validity to the existence and survival of the institution. To claim a new relevance for the RHS it seems important to challenge the assumption that horticulture is merely about gardening. According to Wikipedia, it is “the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation” this definition encompasses a far ?

2010 broader and more challenging remit.

Horticulture is 2025 extremely relevant and pertinent in 1820 various emerging 1500 fields, such as 1 CE food technology 1000 and material development, providing a new potential lens for interpreting the world and i m a g i n i n g new forms of engagement with botany and the role of plants in our every day life.

Architects Carmody Groake have won the competition to update the RHS’ headquarters in West London this includes a series of key moves to improve visitor experience. While this is an important initiative in terms of how the institution communicates its content to its members and positions itself relative to the public, a debate prevails about what is horticulture, its role in society, and whether the RHS is fulfilling its role in representing this practice. As institutions are forced to adapt to changing concerns and multiple trends - especially in today’s globalising and urban world – how can the RHS shift and adapt its operational structure, scope and ideology to engage with a new understanding and agency of horticulture to be explored and questioned within new limits.

FOOTNOTES 1. The RHS Garden in South Kensington, 1859 (Wellcome Library) 2. Map of the World showing extent of the British Emprire in 1886 (Wikipedia) 3. George VI and Queen Elizabeth pay a visit to the Coronation Empire Exhibition in 1937 (telegraph.co.uk) 4. http://www.royal.gov.uk 5. The Evolution of the Earth’s Economic Centre of Gravity from 1 CE to 2025. Calculated by weighting national GDP by each nation’s geographic center of gravity; a line drawn from the center of the earth through the economic center of gravity locates it on the earth’s surface (MGI analysis)

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A ROYAL NATURE

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The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) was founded in 1804 with the intention of being a repository of all knowledge surrounding horticulture, and to develop and disseminate this discipline throughout the country. During the British Empire, horticulture was essential to understand the world and to communicate British achievements. The contemporary relevance and purpose of horticulture is ambiguous and ill-defined, as reflected by the current identity of the RHS as a bourgeois gardening club.

If Horticulture is “the branch of agriculture that deals with the art, science, technology, and business of plant cultivation”, how could this practice and its institutional organism be reimagined to suit current preoccupations?

IMAGE LIST 1. Artefacts from Joseph Hooker’s expeditions (Economic Botany Collection at the Royal Botanical Garden) 2. Greenhouse design for Royal Horticultural Society by John Claudius Loudon, 1818 3. RHS’ Lawrence Hall in Vincent Square in West London 4. ‘London is...’ 38% Open Green space, 24% Domestic Gardens (Office for National Statistics Generalised Land Use Database 2005)

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: URBAN LOGICS & INSTITUTIONAL FORMS

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CATARINA DE ALMEIDA BRITO

LONDON’S TRANSPORT DEFINED AS AN INSTITUTION An institution is not defined merely by its rules and laws, but also by the habits and conventions that characterise its everyday motions. It could be argued that, for an institution to thrive, there must be a strong belief and trust in the ideology that it represents. Given that institutions rely on connections with society and customs, Anthony Gidden’s claim that “institutions by definition are the more enduring features of social life”1 accurately identifies the importance of time and acclimatisation for an institution to form.

Institutions differ from organisations which are defined internal membership, hierarchy and goal systems that structure them. 2 With this understanding, what we today know as ‘Transport for London’ - commonly perceived as an organisation – can be redefined as an institution. Originally founded in 1863, by 1933 the unification of various private railway companies, bus and tram operations marked an unprecedented ideology for the way London would function – a city fully integrated through infrastructure. In the buildup to unification, a series of deliberate moves helped define it as an institutional body and revealed the role it played in shaping the lives and form of London that far exceed the influence of an infrastructural organisation. The Underground became common space within which passengers coexisted under a level of order, regimentation, control and etiquette.

The Metropolitan Railway’s (MR)3 drastic and unregulated expansion into the North-West of the capital introduced the notion of suburbia to London’s urban fabric. The promotion of this vision was partially a tactic used to capitalise on the land that the MR tracks occupied; the cost of its rapid expansion required that the demand for transport had to be created rather than met. Nevertheless, the Underground was offering an exciting opportunity to buy highly affordable property and live a calmer and healthier lifestyle far from the city’s centre.

In 1906 Frank Pick became Assistant Managing Director of the UERL6 and was in part responsible for the different railway companies’ usage of the “Underground” brand for joint marketing. This was Pick’s first step in towards a rebrandiing of the Underground as a popular space rather than a just a transport service: to shape an ideology for the institution. A key initiative was connectivity and unification across all of London expressed through a series of posters promoting all the attractions across the city. The vast quantities of art commissioned for and by the Underground under Pick’s Art for All campaign brought art to the public, making it accessible to all where it had previously been considered too elitist for wider appreciation.

management. Their inability to control such a large number of people combined with the invaluable safety of thousands overwhelmed their doubts. They immediately allowed for shelter, placing bunk beds on the platforms for the public and providing storage for the safe-keeping of museum artefacts. A year later, a previously inaccessible tunnel on the Central Line was used to house the Plessey electronics factory. By 1944, five of the eight deep-level air-raid shelter designs that had been built two years earlier for government protection were opened to the public. The scenes in the tunnels of London moved artists like Henry Moore, who along with other war artists noted how a once private world had become public and communal, and the public had claimed this space as their own.

The network fully immersed itself in the world of art, and was saturated with strong branding ad powerful graphic design. Since the reinterpretation of the ring and bar logo in 1916 – Pick’s collaboration with Edward Johnston – the visual language of the underground was universally recognisable and synonymous with London itself. Equally famous was its use of the world’s first sans-serif type (Johnston Sans), which remains an integral part of its popular iconography today. The public’s appreciation of design was proved further during the unification in 1933, when electrical draughtsman Harry Beck published the first version of the tube map we use today.

Over the last century the Underground has formed a vital part of the population’s daily life. Prior to the recent commission Labyrinth for Art on the Underground, artist Mark Wallinger exhibited a selection of amateur photographs from an online blog showing sleeping passengers on the underground (The Unconscious, 2010). As Wallinger claims, the juxtaposition between peaceful expression and physical discomfort expresses a level of remarkable trust that reflects on the population’s relationship with public transport. More interesting however, is the existence of the blog from where these images were sourced and similar mediums such as the account @ asleeponthetube on Twitter. Capturing the levels of basic comfort and trust acknowledged by the sleeping passenger, these photographs epitomise the public’s long-lasting relationship with the Underground and document a clear example of a subculture within the institution.

In addition to programs in art and design there was a heavy investment in architecture to create a unified and strong presence above ground. Architect Charles Holden’s seven commissioned stations along the Northern Line stood as beacons of modernity amongst the expansive South London suburbs.

The architecture’s Modernist style was integrated

Sweet secret suburb, beyond the city’s rim: St John’s Wood.4 Ross Clark’s description of poet John Betjeman’s “gift to romanticise the mundane” seems particularly poignant when watching Metro-Land.5 Filmed in 1973, the documentary patiently follows Betjeman and his exploration of the suburban spread between Baker Street and Verney Junction, coined as ‘MetroLand’ in 1902. The footage is effective in capturing the incredible optimism behind this image for London’s geographical and cultural expansion – a vision established and realised by the transport network.

Wembley in particular was to become the capital’s new centre. Before hosting the British Empire Exhibition in 1924, rail entrepreneur Sir Edward Watkin ran a competition calling architects and engineers to design a tower whose height and structure would rival Paris’

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elegantly into the Underground’s brand; as of 1924, the working classes from Clapham Common to Morden had a tantalising and convenient escape route to the vibrant city centre. Holden was to later design the UERL’s headquarters in 1929; as the tallest building in London, the cathedral-like presence of 55 Broadway in St James’ Park emphasised the importance of ideology the Underground represented.

Frank Pick couldn’t even deny the power of the institution’s artistic identity from Holden’s creation; sculptures by Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, and Eric Gill were commissioned and incorporated into the skyscraper’s Portland stone facade.

[I like how] one feels safe and secure within this kind of institution.7

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Eiffel Tower. Although never fully realised, the suburban initiative forever changed the perception of lifestyle at the time and transformed the shape of London.

Throughout the years the various phases of TfL have been shaped by differing agendas. The influence it has had over the public’s relation and response to London has been a constant denominator. Its consistent bold moves and its role as a catalyst have far surpassed the bounds of an organisation. Be it the dream of suburbia and commute that drastically altered the city’s perimeter and a introduced a new system of life, the development of an iconic identity within the art world or the unification of a public transport system across London; its enduring relationship with the people and the city define it as an institution.

The Second World War redefined the notion of daily life for England’s population, and saw a completely new relationship with the city’s underground. Relying on the city’s tunnel network for the protection of thousands, communities gathered in a shared experience which would come to symbolise the nation’s stoic and defiant front against Germany.8 The public’s instinctive attempt to take shelter underground was initially met by an equally instinctive attempt to prevent it by the network

CLAUDIA FRAGOSO

FOOTNOTES 1. Giddens, Anthony. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration (University of California Press; New Ed edition; 1986) 2. ‘If institutions are the rules of the game, organizations...are the players.’

Hodgson, Geoffrey M. What are Institutions? (Journal of Economic Issues Vol. XL No. 1; March 2006) 3. The world’s first underground passenger railway service (now the Metropolitan line) opened in 1863. London’s previously overcrowded working-class neighbourhoods were obliterated as the Metropolitan Railway installed a cut-and-cover track for steam locomotives so as to comfortably and conveniently transport the middle classes between Paddington and Farringdon.

4. Betjeman, John. Metro-Land (1973) BBC 5. Clark, Ross. Betjeman’s Metro-Land Revisited (http://www.telegraph. co.uk/finance/property/3353156/Betjemans-metro-land-revisited.html; Sept. 2006) 6. The Underground Electric Railways Company of London 7. Interview with Mark Wallinger, Going Underground: A Culture.... (2013) BBC2, 3 June.

8. Geoghegan, Tom. Did the Blitz really unify Britain? (BBC News Magazine; 2010)

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The role Transport for London (TfL) has within London has gone beyond that of a mere infrastructural network. Commonly perceived as an organisation, the different phases TfL has undergone since its foundation in 1863 demonstrate that it is in fact an institution, and a crucial part of London’s forming as we know it in the present day.

IMAGE LIST 1. Recent visualisation of what Wembley’s skyline would look like had the Great Tower for London been completed. Brown, Matt. Time Travel London: Watkin’s Folly Towers Over Wembley (www.thelondonist.com; 2013) 2. The circle and bar logo integrated into Clapham South’s Portland stone facade.

3. A compilation of images of Mark Wallinger’s ‘The Unconscious’ exhibtion (2010) 4. Shelterers in the Tube, Henry Moore (1941) 5. Kendall, Tracy. (DETAIL) (RCA Textiles 2001) 6. O’Reilly, Oran. New World Order (RCA Printmaking 2001)

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THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: URBAN LOGICS & INSTITUTIONAL FORMS

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CLAUDIA FRAGOSO

THE URBAN FAMILY IS A MULTIFACETED ENTITY

The notion of the nuclear family emerged as a result of the industrial age when rural extended family life was shattered and replaced in the metropolis. Today in the information age the nuclear family forms later and splits sooner1. Statistics show that this trend will become more and more usual. The nuclear family has gone from being the idealized norm of the developed countries to become one of several possible stages in the lifespan of the urban family.

In my project I am exploring the institution of family and questioning the nuclear family’s role as the norm around which we plan, estimate and regulate. »Institutions standardize behaviours and carries habits between generations and are therefore of great importance for the social order. On a deeper level, they are central to our worldview and the ability to orient ourselves; Institutions convey meaning to our miljö. 2» The miljö is about spatiality, what surrounds the individual: »Miljö is the external condition that is believed to exert a decisive influence on someone’s development; the environment (of a natural or communal kind) which one occupies; the atmosphere; sometimes more tangible. 3» Through these statements the family can be seen as an institution and the direct miljö of the family can be seen as the home. The family is considered to be the most fundamental unit of a society. Yet the family in itself is no a stable entity. Common to most people during their lifetime is to belong to least two families, namely the family you’re born into and the one yourself form.

A family’s development moves cyclically between the

addition of new offspring and new members as well as to decimation and fragmentation through emigration, marriage and death.

The British professor Richard Wilkinson’s research around inequality within societies shows that in the most equal societies, there is a general open view of the family and a more co-operative and sharing mentality.

These countries all have a greater social wellbeing that can be measured by: high life expectancy, math and literacy knowledge, level of trust and social mobility, yet low rates of infant mortality, homicides, imprisonment, teenage births, obesity, mental illness – including drug and alcohol addiction.4 Instead of privileging the nuclear family above other constellations by treating it as the basic social unit, we should look upon the family as an entity that is constantly changing along with its members. One stage could be a nuclear constellation but the next might be a different one. A nuclear family is just one of the multiple stages and constellations that exist within a family’s lifespan. The programme of my project could be seen as a metaphor of a big family house where all the family members at some point have lived in all the different rooms due to certain need or events. In my project, the inhabitants of a cohousing block form a kind of extended family.

I have started a survey around my site in Peckham knocking on doors, testing my hypothesis about the diversity of its residents, their domestic set ups and their dwellings and have photographed each of the families that I have met in their homes. The work has given me a deeper knowledge of their specific needs.

Through this study I am aiming to put forward an alternative take on Boris Johnson’s spaces standards carried out as part of the London Plan. My alternative will advocate co-housing and shared space orientated schemes and developments.

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FOOTNOTES 1. The London Plan 2. Nationalencyklopedin 3. Svenska Akademiens Ordbok 4. Wilkinson & Pickett The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (2009)

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THE URBAN FAMILY IS A MULTIFACETED ENTITY

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The notion of the nuclear family emerged as a result of the industrial age when rural extended family life was shattered and replaced in the metropolis. Today in the information age the nuclear family forms later and splits sooner. Statistics show that this trend will become more and more usual. The nuclear family has gone from being the idealized norm of the developed countries to become one of several possible stages in the lifespan of the urban family. In my project I am exploring the institution of family and questioning the nuclear family’s role as the norm around which we plan, estimate and regulate. What can be done through architecture to mend and solve the housing crisis?

IMAGE LIST 1. Supersurface_Life, Superstudio (1972) 2. Family constellations, Author's own (2014) 3. The Family, John Brisland (1976) 4. Families, David Shrigley (2006) 5. To the memory of H.P. Lovecraft, Mike Nelson (1999)

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The urban family is a multifaceted entity

NILS-ERIK FRANSSON MA ARCHITECTURE 2015

The urban family is a multifaceted entity

NILS-ERIK FRANSSON MA ARCHITECTURE 2015

ALBERTOPOLIS 1847 Prince Albert became the president of the Society of Art, between 1847 and 1849 the Prince played a leading part in the mounting of three small exhibitions of ‘Art manufacture.’

These were promoted under the leadership of Henry Cole, an Assistant Keeper at the Record Office. At the end of the 1849 Art manufacture exhibition, Cole approached the Prince with a most ambitious scheme for an international Exhibition of all Nations, - the motivation was for Britain exert its role as a superior industrial empire. Th is became the Great exhibition held in Hyde Park in 1852, it is sometimes referred to as the Crystal palace, in reference to Joseph Paxton’s temporary glass and cast iron structure in which it was held.

The Royal Commission was set up to administer the exhibition with Albert as the founding president and Cole as its chief administrator. The Exhibition was a complete success. Six million people, a third of the entire population of Britain at the time, visited the Crystal palace. The event was self-financed and made a surplus of £186,000 the equivalent of £17,770,000 today.

Th is extra revenue was used by the Royal Commission to purchase land to the south of the Festival site in Hyde Park, Albert insisted the land should be useful to the public and provide educational access to the masses. An array of institutions where established including; The Imperial Institute, Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. All built in the area to the south of the exhibition. The Commissioners of the Great Exhibition are still sitting today and have made possible one of the greatest concentrations of arts and science institutions in the world. It continues to invest money in educational projects, offering major awards to scientists and engineers for research, design and development.

The area was nicknamed Albertopolis after the Prince and its main focus was to promote both arts and sciences. Th is concept conjures up Romantic notions from the Renaissance, a polymath such as the great Leonardo da Vinci working on the Mona Lisa whilst simultaneously under going scientific study. The idea that one can be great at many things that the human mind is as vast as the imagination. As another great Albert said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein

face, has the time come to move beyond the age of the mono-math.?

“When you have a group of people who’ve had a different professional training, a different professional experience, they not only have a different knowledge base, but they have a different perspective on everything.” Tal Golesworthy Tal Goleworthy an engineer, who fi xed his own heart, used ideas borrowed from the garden and aeroplane industry to mend his heart. Persuading surgeons he might be able to improve upon their techniques was not easy, that they may be able to learn a thing or two from engineering techniques. The process took a growing team three years to perfect. The result would be a personalized sleeve that is stitched snuggly around the enlarged vessel, providing structural support and preventing it from growing any bigger. Polymaths like Tal Goleworthy are magnets for collaboration, these are the people who speak different professional languages, who live in different professional communities and can unite those worlds. They are the people who bridge sectors and they are the people who can innovate through cross fertilisation of ideas.

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Edward de Bono the physician, author, inventor and consultant, coined the term: lateral thinking - solving problems through an indirect and creative approach, using reasoning that is not immediately obvious and involving ideas that may not be obtainable by using only traditional step-by-step logic. Polymaths are perfectly placed to make those kinds of innovative connections between different realms of knowledge both within themselves and out in the world.

If you were to go to Pirelli gardens in South Kensington today and look at the buildings around the square, designed by Francis Fowke and later continued by Henry Scott . Fowke executed his work in the Renaissance style, he never finished his work on the square - a burst blood vessel claimed his life, it’s a shame Goleworthy’s personalised heart sleeve came decades too late for this victorian engineer and architect. The four sides of the square were built at different times. The Original entrance is through the beautiful door at the far side whose panels symbolise the link between the arts and sciences. The vision on the door was never fully realised for Albertopolis.

Can there be a new dawn for a twenty fi rst century Renaissance man? One that will take us to a brave new age of discovery and fully realized Albertopolis’ mandate?

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Or to some it could imply a dilettante who has no real commitment or knowledge in either field. Science and art are often considered opposites, competing forces; has Albertopolis lived up to its original proposal as a polymath center for bringing together the arts and the sciences?

The word polymath comes from the Greek polymathēs, meaning having learnt much. For a very long time in past civilizations from ancient Greece, Rome, China and Renaissance Italy, the polymath was highly valued.

It was only with the advent of industrialization that we began to understand expertise as being about the narrowing of knowledge rather than the broadening of it. The specialization and division of labour did not only apply to factory assembly lines but they also to intellectual labour. Although specialization has facilitated human progress in countless fields and is still very important today, has it come at a cost? There is always the danger of developing tunnel vision, a fragmented view of the world and when it comes to the scale and complexity of the problems we currently

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IMAGE LIST 1. Henry Cole and his most ambitious scheme 2. Albertopolis 3. Crystal palace, 4. V&A The Original entrance 5. Prince Albert, a man of vision

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EXISTENTIAL UNCERTAINTY Eight years later Lord Martin Rees, along with philosophy professor Huw Price and computer programmer and co-founder of Skype Jaan Tallinn, founded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risks (CSER) which is looking at four sources of threat: climate change, nuclear technology, biotechnology and artificial technology.

All three share the shame concern about near-term risks to humanity and aim ‘’to steer a small fraction of Cambridge’s great intellectual resources, and of the reputation built on its past and present scientific preeminence, to the task of ensuring that our own species has a long-term future’’1.

WHAT IS AN EXISTENTIAL RISK? ‘’One where an adverse outcome would either annihilate Earth-originating intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential’’2.

This includes technologies that might permanently deplete humanity’s resources or block further scientific progress, in addition to ones that put the species itself at risk.

Nick Bostrom himself is the founding director of The Future of Humanity Institute. Established in 2005 as part of the Faculty of Philosophy and the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, the FHI is an interdisciplinary research centre focused on predicting and preventing large-scale risks to human civilization.

Bostrom believes that humanity has entered a new kind of technological era with the capacity to threaten its future as never before. These existential risks are “threats we have no track record of surviving”2, therefore are unprecedented. In contrast to wellknown natural threats to human existence such as nuclear holocaust, asteroids, super-volcanic eruptions, earthquakes etc., it is believed that the current radical transforming technologies could equally and potentially even more prove destructive for the human race. Existential risks, and other risks to civilization may come from natural or man-made sources.

Whereas existential risks have been systematically divided to anthropogenic and non- anthropogenic risks (they may arise from natural or man-made sources), it has been argued that many existential risks are currently unknown.

FHI’s stated objective is to ‘’develop and utilize scientific and philosophical methods for reasoning about topics of fundamental importance to humanity, such as the effect of future technology on the human condition and the possibility of global catastrophes’’3. Apart from the Institute’s primary study on the effect of future technology on the human condition, other studies include potential obstacles on space colonization, dangers of advanced artificial intelligence and the probable impacts of technological progress on social and institutional risks.

And although this is happening on our side of the world, across the ocean we also discover the GLOBAL CATASTROPHIC RISK INSTITUTE, the MACHINE INTELLIGENCE RESEARCH INSTITUTE and THE FUTURE OF LIFE INSTITUTE. These three institutes are also concerned themselves with studies on the breadth of major GCRs and focus on big questions such as which GCRs are most likely to occur, which are the most effective ways of reducing GCRs and what ethical and other issues are raised by GCRs? GCR stands for Global Catastrophic Risk and is defined as a hypothetical future event with the potential to inflict serious damage to human wellbeing on a global scale. Some such events could destroy or even potentially cripple modern civilization. Other, even more severe, scenarios could threaten permanent

human extinction, referred to as existential risks as already mentioned before. Specific GCRs include emergence of technologies, environmental change, financial collapse, governance failure, infectious disease, nuclear war and astrobiology.

In search of a better understanding of this emerging area of research I contacted Dr. Anders Sandberg, a senior researcher in the FHI. Currently occupied with the FHI-Amlin collaboration analysing systemic risk and risk modelling. His research centres on management of low-probability high-impact risks, societal and ethical issues surrounding human enhancement and new technology, as well as estimating the capabilities of future technologies. Topics of particular interest include global catastrophic risk, cognitive biases, cognitive enhancement, collective intelligence, neuroethics and public policy.

We are methodologically flexible: some problems are best solved by the techniques of analytic philosophy, others by proving mathematical theorems, simulating them, comparing with historical examples, scenario planning, or surveying people. We look at the possibilities and reason about what might work well, and then experiment with it.

5. From my understanding FHI and CSER have been in collaboration. Would it be beneficial if these institutes merged?

I think one risk is groupthink: everybody thinking about these hard problems in the same way. Having two friendly competing institutes (I like to view it as healthy sibling rivality) is a good way of seeing what conclusions are robust and which ones may be due to local bias.

1. Where does your funding come from and how difficult is it to convince people/funding bodies to invest in your research?

6. Is there a tangible way that the public could feel the effects, or see the evidence, of FHI’s research within their lifetime?

We are mostly privately funded. I am on an industry collaboration project with a reinsurance company, but much of FHI has been based on private donations (and the original Oxford Martin School grant).

I think we may be having some policy impact already (some of our work have appeared in government reports, we are talking to some policymakers etc.), Nick’s book is apparently changing some minds, and so on. But the irony is of course that if we are successful in reducing existential risk, little will seem to happen - the world will be safer, but it is hard to point at an example of it being safer.

Successful risk reduction is never as obvious as unsuccessful risk reduction.

Overall, it is surprisingly hard to get funding bodies to fund existential risk. Many acknowledge that the field is important, yet they seem to think that there is no research or no methodology that could help it. Given the interdisciplinary nature of the problem we often find that we do not fit with standard grant programs.

2. If there was a sustained large amount of funding what would you prioritise spending it on (researchers, equipment, publicity, a new building etc)?

Dr. Sandberg’s final comment suggests an interesting paradox. If risk reduction is successful then it is also invisible. The research done by these institutions could one day save the human-race without the public ever being aware that they were in danger.

Right now researchers. Existential risk is an underresearched area, and one can do quite a lot with small resources. However, it also requires a lot of different kinds of people - philosophers, economists, disaster experts, risk analysts, statisticians etc. to become really useful.

Later, when we know more, it might matter more how much publicity or policy impact one can get.

3.Is the nature of our political/economic system, which is based on short-term policies, simply incompatible with such long-term thinking, regardless of its importance?

Not necessarily. Some institutions are surprisingly long term - consider the case of insurance and especially reinsurance companies, or pension funds - as long as the incentives are right. The problem is that key decision makers often have short-term incentives, and that is unhealthy.

4. What do the researchers at the FHI do on an average day? (Running computer calculations/ simulations? Analysing current research and scientific innovations? Collecting data? Drinking tea and discussing the apocalypse Etc.) Yes to all of them. Right now me and some colleagues are hanging out with insurance people in the City of London in order to figure out how systemic risk emerges from their use of risk models - when we get back to the office there will be plenty of meetings analysing our notes, writing papers about it, reading up on cognitive bias, expertise and finance, as well as programming an agent based simulation of the insurance market.

FOOTNOTES 1. Lewsey, Fred (25 November 2012). “Humanity’s last invention and our uncertain future”.

2. Sean Coughlan, How are humans going to become extinct?, http:// www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22002530, (24 April 2013) 3. “About FHI”. Future of Humanity Institute. Retrieved 01 December 2014.

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Our Final Century: Will the Human Race Survive the Twenty-first Century is a 2003 book by one of Britain’s top scientists Royal Sir Martin Rees. The premise of the book is that the Earth and human survival are in far greater danger from the potential effects of modern technology than is commonly realised, and that the 21st century may be a critical moment in history when humanity’s fate is decided.

Could this be one cosmologist’s apocalyptic belief, an implausible science fiction scenario or is it actually an important area of study that requires a great deal more scientific investigation than they presently receive?

IMAGE LIST 1. Joseph Popper, 2012, Design Interactions, Space Capsule Film Set 2. Daro Montag, 1994, Photography, Fruit of the Sun 3. Hee Jin Kang, 2002, Photography, One

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TACTICS The first contracted private sector prison in the UK was HM Prison Wolds; opened in 1992. Since then the role of the private sector has grown steadily, with 14 prisons in England and Wales operating under corporate ownership, housing 17% of the country’s total inmate population (A higher proportion than in the US). The contracts are typically shared between three companies; G4S Justice Services, Serco Custodial Services and Sodexo Justice Services.

The contracting-out of imprisonment into the hands of corporations remains a controversial topic. Some argue that the involvement of the private sector has created a more diverse market, resulting in improved standards and promoting efficiency. Others however feel that imprisonment is a function of society that should not be delegated by the state and that prisons should not be run with profit in mind. Debate about whether contracted prisons perform better or worse than their state counterparts continues to rumble on, with it remaining unclear if they represent better value for money. Reports frequently criticise privately run institutions, claiming that multi million-pound global companies are increasing their own profits by making cuts to staff and working conditions whilst running off tax payers’ money.1 These reports are largely justified by the statistics. In some cases, the performances of private prisons have been so poor that they have been taken back into the hands of the public sector. In the 2012/13 ratings produced by the Ministry of Justice, two newly opened privately run institutions received the lowest score (one out of four), signifying that their “overall performance is of serious concern”, whilst a further two were awarded the second lowest rating.

This is compared to just one of the 121 publicly-run prisons receiving the lowest grade.

PROFIT GENERATORS ‘It’s important for us to step back and look at this from a moral perspective; all people of any faith or no faith at all can claim it’s reprehensible to imprison someone for making money or financial motives. It’s important to always remember every single person is a human being, even if they have done something we may find problematic or illegal. They are not profit incentives.’ Michael McBride, director of Urban Strategies and Lifelines to Healing at PICO National Network. 2 In the US, private companies responsible for the running of prisons have initiated negotiations with local governments to create deals that contain high inmate occupancy rates. These ‘Lockup Quotas’ demand for guaranteed occupancy rates or force taxpayers to pay for the empty beds if the prison population decreases due to lowered criminal activity and other factors, thus essentially creating a low-crime tax. This inversion of the prison’s original impetus as an institution raises questions about the motives behind privatisation in this sector. Certain contracts require prisons to be at 90 to 100 percent capacity, creating over-crowding and stretching a prison’s resources to its limits. Contractual clauses like these manufacture incentives for criminalisation and do nothing towards promoting rehabilitation, crime reduction and community rebuilding.

These alterations in the institution’s tactics were brought into place in order for the prison system to continue functioning with the aid of external financial resources. However, the ideology of the institution has become warped, creating discrepancies throughout the 4

justice system. Policy decisions that initially strived to be base themselves on creating and maintaining a just criminal justice system that protects the public interest have become an instrument for ensuring corporate profits.

‘OUTSOURCED AND UNACCOUNTABLE’ The increasing prominence of privatisation is taking effect not just on the prison system but on many aspects of society. Public space has become a particularly ambiguous term, with many ‘community spaces’ falling under developers’ jurisdiction. Recent projects, such as Thomas Heatherwick’s ‘Garden Bridge’, present a situation where a space’s public status is seriously compromised by its funding and access.

The cost of the project has increased from an original forecast of £60m to £175m.

Public funding has climbed from a ‘minimal’ figure to £60m. All in aid of constructing a bridge that will remain closed to those on 5 bicycles or to groups consisting of eight or more.

In fact, the bridge’s official functioning hours as an actual ‘bridge’ will be between the hours of 6am and midnight, leading to rumours that access will require the purchase of a ticket.3 In essence, a privately backed public bridge has become a publicly funded private tourist attraction.

Vanity projects aside, specific London Boroughs are also susceptible to flirtation with private investment.

Councils hit by budget cuts are forced to re-strategise in order to keep valuable cornerstones of their districts functioning, but at what cost? Barnet is a Borough where changes are happening at speed; especially the way residents access their local services – everything from paying council tax to parking tickets to enquiring how many books are available in the library. Over the past few years, the Conservativeled council has grasped almost every public service it can lay its hands on and outsourced it. Between January 2012 and October 2013, Barnet farmed out its legal services, care for people with disabilities, IT, finance, HR, cemeteries and crematoriums, planning and regeneration, trading standards and licensing, management of council housing, procurement, parking, and the highways department. Should this trend of outsourcing continue, the local Unison branch calculates that Barnet council will shrink from having 3200 staff in September 2012 to just 332.

Residents are left finding it easier to list what their council doesn’t directly provide than what it does.

When cuts reach a certain level, it’s not just services you lose, but an entire democratic institution. The new-model commissioning council no longer stands as a local arm of government but an agglomeration of mostly privately provided services. Two of the biggest contracts, worth around £500 million and lasting 10 years respectively, have gone to Capita.

A giant FTSE 100 corporation worth £7bn is now handling everything from rubbish collection to new roads.4 Local decisions are

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now handled remotely by personnel hundreds of miles away. Pension queries go to Darlington. Benefits end up in Blackburn. Parking notices come from Croydon. Births, death and marriages are managed in Brent. These two contracts are due to run their course for the next decade, so regardless of whom the locals of Barnet opt to vote for in the next two council elections, they will get Capita.

CELLULAR ETHICS The American Institute of Architects recently rejected proposed policy changes that would prevent US practices from designing facilities for torture and execution. The AIA’s existing code of ethics ‘should not exist to create limitations on the practice by AIA members of specific building types’, according to the organisation’s outgoing president Helene Combs.5 US prisons bring different challenges to the ones faced by designers in the UK. They contain programmes such as execution chambers and, in the case of notorious supermax prisons, provide architecture for solitary confinement. In 2011, UN Special Reporter Juan E Mendez claimed that remaining in solitary confinement for longer than 15 days constitutes as torture or inhuman and degrading punishment. Other professions in the country, such as doctors and nurses, have moved quickly to explicitly decline participation in practices associated with torture, so should architects to do the same?

Supermax prisons are designed to isolate people.

Raphael Sperry, president of ‘Architects/Designers/ Planners for Social Responsibility’ (ADPSR), explains that there is no communal space and that every interaction takes place through a slot in the door. ‘All meals are pushed through the slot, all nursing visits take place through the cell door, all medication.’ For architects, the design of such an institution lands them in an awkward position. They may design within the code of ethics, however the state of post-occupancy use may push the facilities into torture territory. The dilemma remains whether the prison population is one that is calling out for better standards of architecture, or is the profession in fact just an accomplice in a much larger injustice?6 Perhaps the best way to serve an incarcerated public is to fully recognise them as a public, even if their right

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to freedom has been curtailed.

FOOTNOTES 1. Chris Poyner, “Prison Privatisation”,The Guardian (Nov 2012) 2. http://prwatch.org 3. Rowan Moore, “London’s Garden Bridge”,The Guardian (Sept 2014) 4. http://barnet.gov.uk 5. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/architects-code-of-ethics 6. Mimi Zeiger, “Tough Cell”, Architectural Review (Feb 2015)

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External pressures, particularly in times of economic uncertainty, push institutions into employing new survival tactics in order to remain relevant. These new modes of operation reveal hidden agendas that lie behind an institution’s figurehead-like reputation and stated raison d’etre. Art galleries are beginning to exchange their brands as readily as currencies, whilst cuts in state expenditure result in institutions falling into the hands of corporations with questionable motives. The privatisation of prisons in order to improve their performance has altered the institution’s ideology into one of profit rather than reform.

But could the privatisation of such institutions be utilised to create a more beneficial infrastructure for society? Can common perceptions be altered through the architecture of such institutes?

IMAGE LIST 1. Picture Window, Emily Allchurch (1999) 2. The New Power Grid, Author’s own 3. Untitled, Shelagh Sartin (1979) 4. The Federal Correctional Complex, Colorado 5. Heatherwick ‘Garden Bridge’, private public space 6. Exercise yard of Pelican Bay State Prison, KMD Architects

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

LANDSCAPE REHABILITATION CLINIC CURE TO MODERNISATION + LANDSCAPE REHABILITATION Our society exists within a current critique of post humanism, based on the philosophical and ethical stance developed in the late 20th century.

Post-humanism attempts to revert the effects that humanity has had on the environment. Central to this is the belief that humans have no inherent rights to destroy nature or set themselves above it. As a consequence of climate change, the modern way of life and politics that were based on the mechanical worldview were rendered obsolete and the notion of the ‘others’ in our ecosystem became undeniable.

Today the phrase ‘sustainable development’ is too frequently used to justify major economical development projects. By “pairing up” with ecology rather than conquering nature, we try to deal with the damage instigated by capitalism and modernisation.

As William Ophuls writes, “[e]cology is the surest cure for modern hubris.” As a result, an unaccountable number of nature conservation acts emerged in an effort to counterbalance the human damage caused to the landscape and planet’s ecosystem.

The concept of nature conservation and the measures taken in its name also tends towards fetish. Whilst nature conservation is critical, fencing it off into preservation is culturally unproductive and leads to a false understanding of natural landscapes. A cure should be sought beyond the physical restoration of natural landscape. Rehabilitation demands that landscape be redefined, reclassified and that its relationship to the built environment be entirely reframed. How can architecture be an agent in this process?

FRIENDLY AFFAIRS IN THE ARCTIC In 1996 the eight arctic nations (the USA, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Russia) established the Arctic Council. The regional members “club” is a high-level informal intergovernmental forum that governs the arctic region. In the light of environmental and economical urgency, the arctic nations called for a peaceful cooperation in order to avoid political tension and environmental disasters.

It is only recently that the permanent Arctic Council Secretariat opened in Tromo, Norway, a city that bills itself as the ‘gateway to the Arctic.’ Though “Tromo is not yet a capital for the Arctic Council in the way that Brussels is the capital for the European Union.” The secretariat is located at the back of the High North Research Centre for Climate and the Environment.

Their biennial assembly, attended by high-profile politicians such as a Secretary of State and Foreign Ministers, is a “friendly” gathering; they call it “a chat’” and “a creative progress” in which primarily environmental issues are discussed.

And they may even attend in knitted sweaters. Security matters are mostly avoided in discussions but their common interests of “sustainable development” and collaborative scientific research are embraced.

The full membership of the Council is exclusive to the eight nations but the ‘Arctic gold rush’ is attracting international attention. Since polar ice is melting, the region is opening up new shipping routes between Asia and Europe. In addition, the region holds up to 30% of the world’s undiscovered minerals and natural resources. The Council gives a warm welcome to those who are interested in their activities and the members may grant an “Observer” status to an interested party if agreed within the Council. Recent joiners include India, South Korea, Japan and China, but their clout

3. Landscape Rehabilitation: The architecture choreographs and builds new relationship with various ground conditions.

is limited; they cannot speak or vote.

The strategy to keep the institution non-legally committed allows easy consensus. This kind of high-profile informal institutions is growing. Other examples include G8, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation and Alliance of Small Island States. The ‘voluntary’ nature of such institutions is considered to be effective.

With increasing human activities in the arctic, the Council is gaining power, and yet their relations are ambiguous and somewhat fragile. Despite their critical discussions, their “casual” attitudes seems to resist the idea of them becoming heavily institutionalised in a traditional sense. It could be said that it is the ambiguity of the council’s relationships that preserves the fragile nature of arctic. In the process of building an institution, will “informality” continue to keep the arctic governance in peace?

a working system develops, creating a network, within which each participant has a role. Therefore institutions operate as systems of relationships between differentiated activities operated by individuals. In a changing political/cultural climate, adaptation is critical for the survival of institutions since “the source of the cultural change is [from the] outside” [2] and is enforced onto the institutional patterns.

Borrowing from 18th century naturalist Carl Linnaeuscan’s idea of nature being “self-organised” and “a complementarity between function and purpose of life forms”, and a moral philosopher Adam Smith’s notion of all living forms striving for “selfpreservation”, we can infer that institutions can be understood as a system formed to give a function and purpose to each human being. And like biological ecosystems, as an institution becomes functional and useful to the wider environment, it generates productivity for its society.

INSTITUTIONS AS ECOLOGIES “A workable relationship with the environment is achieved not by individuals or even species acting independently, but by their acting in concert through an organisation of their diverse capabilities, therefore constituting a communal system.“ “The perspective collective life as an adaptive process consisting of an interaction of environment population, and organisation. Out of that process emerges the ecosystem.”

- Amos Hawley - Human Ecology The way in which institutions operate is comparable to ecology. Ecological research is to “understand how the environment, including biotic and abiotic patterns and processes, affects abundance and distribution of organisms.” [1] Similarly, institutions are codependent systems and considering them in parallel to ecology is useful in a post-humanist world where human networks are ever more complex.

Mutuality is the key to the emergence of institutions.

Symbiosis of individuals inevitably creates situations and interactions around which common activities are shared. As this nascent mutuality is stabilised,

NAVI MASUTOMI

FOOTNOTES [1] John A. Wiens & Michael R. Moss – Issues and perspectives in Landscape Ecology (2005) [2] Randy Albelda - Alternatives to Economic Orthodoxy: A Reader in Political Economy (1987)

NAVI MASUTOMI

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LANDSCAPE REHABILITATION CLINIC

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This article addresses issues surrounding governance over landscapes and the emergence of institutions from geographical and political fragility. The Landscape Rehabilitation Clinic rethinks the definition of natural landscape and our understandings of social constructs in an ecological light.

IMAGE LIST 1. Ruth MaCloed, Treeline 2002 2. Bernarby Barford, Conversation Piece 2002 3. Author, Landscape Rehabilitation Clinic 2015

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

METAMORPHOSIS OF ASCETICISM Principal terminology: Asceticism: a practice of the denial of physical or psychological desires in order to attain a spiritual ideal or goal.

From Greek ἀσκητής ‘a monk or hermit’, < ἀσκεῖν ’to exercise’.

Monasticism: an institutionalized religious practice whose members attempt to live by a rule that requires works that go beyond those of either the laity or the ordinary spiritual leaders of their religions.

From post-classical Latin monasticus relating to a monk or a monastery (5th cent.), < Byzantine Greek οναστικός , lit. ‘relating to solitary life’ (4th cent.), < Hellenistic Greek ονάζειν ‘to live alone’.

Christianity further developed the idea that renunciation of physical pleasures can lead to spiritual perfection. As Christianity was legally recognized in the Roman Empire in AD 313 and 78 years later became the sole official religion, many Christians withdrew from society as a protest against official status of their faith. As Christians were no longer persecuted by the Roman Empire, a reclusive and ascetic lifestyle replaced martyrdom as a path to secure personal salvation4. This marked the beginning of Christian monasticism. First Christian monks were hermits living alone in deserts of Egypt. According to Pier Vittorio Aureli, they were first people to acknowledge their individuality in relation to society; as before humans were defined as a part of family or other social group5. Excessive asceticism was common

Religion: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

Disputed origin: a) from Latin relegere ‘go through again’ (in reading or in thought), b) from religare ‘to bind fast’, via notion of ‘place an obligation on’, or ‘bond between humans and gods’, c) from religiens ‘careful’.

true spirit of Christianity and monasticism as a selfish evasion of responsibilities11. However, Protestant Reformation did not reject the idea of asceticism. It aimed to transplant asceticism into ordinary society.

As Catholic sacraments were abolished, methodical self-control and self-denial was perceived as a path to gain salvation12. According to Max Weber, this new lifestyle influenced the development of capitalism13.

As striving for profit gained a religious significance, pleasure for the sake of it became even more sinful than before14. Frugality and hard work became new forms of asceticism.

Modern forms of asceticism are a reaction against materialistic excesses, which are, paradoxically, partially caused by asceticism itself. Industrious work ethic resulted in increased quality and quantity of goods which had to find their outlet. Growing affluence and novel arrangements such as smokeless fires, cotton clothing and umbrellas increased levels of

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individual comfort15. This created a self-accelerating system where offer and demand of comfort fueled each other. Contemporary asceticism provides a mechanism of gaining control over one’s life in a context of overwhelming sensual stimuli. Food restrictions and physical exercises are common methods of maintaining personal authenticity. In this aspect asceticism has returned to its original meaning: facilitating one’s personal development attainable within one’s lifetime.

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While we can understand asceticism as a practice, monasticism is the institutionalised form of the practice. Originally asceticism was used to describe physical exercises of athletes training for contests (e.g., the Olympic Games) and warriors preparing for warfare. They disciplined their bodies by abstaining from various pleasures and by enduring difficult physical tests1. In Sparta wealth and luxuries of all kinds were forbidden, and all the citizen men ate together to prevent anyone from having nicer food than anyone else. This was done in order to ensure toughness and ability to fight – essential qualities of the era. The concept of asceticism was later used

by Pythagoreans, Greek philosophers, describing a method leading to a life of virtue. Also, the Cynics practised it as a way of rejecting commonly accepted values; they chose to live on streets. Benign neglect of the body and detachment from the world were exemplified by Neo-Platonists as necessary for the soul’s ascent to the divine3. As a result of semantic change, asceticism started to denote a denial of body rather than celebration of it.

among monks. One of the most severe examples was monastic movement in Syria. Everything that could reduce sleep and make the resultant short period of rest as troublesome as possible was tried by Syrian ascetics6. One of them, Saint Simeon Stylites, spent 37 years on a top of a pillar, occupying a platform (the size of one square meter) enclosed by a balustrade6.

These excesses of Early Christianity have created a negative connotation, associating asceticism and extreme self-mortification.

Christian monasticism in Medieval Europe, aimed for a relatively moderated asceticism, which positioned itself between mere sacrifice of luxury and attempts to erase one’s body. Medieval asceticism intended to develop ‘a systematic method of rational conduct with the purpose of overcoming the status naturae, to free man from the power if irrational impulses and his dependence on the world and on nature’ 7,8.

Asceticism was implemented by celibacy, abdication of temporal goods, abstinence and fasting9. While individual monks did not own more than a few personal belongings, many monasteries accumulated wealth by operating as landowners and receiving donations. Most of monastic movements originated as an aversion to other established religious orders, attempting to reinstate ascetic ideals10. Despite these endeavors, there was growing dissatisfaction among general public regarding the church and monasteries as institutions of power.

Martin Luther, the sixteenth-century leader of the Protestant Reformation and a former Augustinian friar, viewed monastic life as incompatible with the

JURIS PLATACIS

Gradual metamorphosis of asceticism reflects important social changes. Rather than being a relic from the past, asceticism is an adaptive system of controlling worldly pleasure. Religious institutions have defined materialistic excesses for millennia; today individuals are vested with this right.

FOOTNOTES 1. “Asceticism.” Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2015.

Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://library.eb.co.uk/levels/adult/article/9782> 2. “Asceticism.” Dictionary of World Philosophy. London: Routledge, 2001.

3. “Asceticism.” Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World.

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

4. “Christianity.” Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2015. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://library.eb.co.uk/levels/adult/article/105945>.

5. “Asceticism.” Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought. London: Bloomsbury, 1993.

6. “Saint Simeon Stylites.” Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2015. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. <http://library.eb.co.uk/levels/adult/ article/67837>.

7. Crapps, Robert. An Introduction to Psychology of Religion. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1996. 338.

8. Willson, Andrew W., Rev’d. Personal interview. 26 Jan 2015.

9. Blakemore, Colin, and Sheila Jennett. “Asceticism.” The Oxford Companion to the Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

10. Mcfarland, Ian A. “Monasticism.” Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

11. Zachman, Randall. “Luther, Martin.” Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. Great Barrington: Berkshire Publishing Group, 2011.

12. “Protestant Ethic.” Collins Dictionary Of Sociology. London: Collins, 2006.

13. Weber, Max. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.

14. Peeters, Evert. “The Performance of Redemption: Asceticism and Liberation in Belgian Lebensreform.” Beyond Pleasure: Cultures of Modern Asceticism. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2011.

15. Shove, Elizabeth. “Comfort and Convenience: Temporality and Practice”. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

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Asceticism has always been an essential part of civilization. Medieval monastic lifestyle represents just one facet of this phenomenon as asceticism has a much wider range of purposes and methods. This article is looking at the changing role of asceticism in the Western world from Ancient Greece until today, demonastrating how different models of ascetcism embody the Zeitgeist and govern people’s lives, and how the secular incarnation of asceticism aimed at self-realization is integral to our contemporary society.

IMAGE LIST 1. Lucian Taylor - Knife and Carrot (1992) 2. Helen Wilde - Untitled (2008) 3. Roman bronze reduction of Myron’s Discobolus, 2nd century AD. 4. St Simeon Stylites. Double-sided icon, 17th century.

5. Andrew Hill - Jogging in the Snow (2010).

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

Aim – salvation and redemption.

Methods – solitude, celibacy, abdication of worldly goods, abstinence and fasting, vow of silence; in some instances – abdication of washing, self-mortification, flagellation.

Methods - efficiency in one’s worldly calling, strict renunciation of the enjoyment of material gains.

Christianity

Calvinism

Aim - salvation and redemption.

Rejects the idea of monasticism and generally has no significant place for asceticism. Only the priests in Confucianism practice discipline and abstinence from certain foods during certain periods.

Confucianism

Is non-ascetic in character, because of its view that God created the world and that the world (including man) is good. Judaism includes only certain ascetic features, such as fasting for strengthening the efficacy of prayer and for gaining merit.

Judaism

asceticism

Aim – release from rebirth, or at least a better rebirth.

Methods – yoga, meditation; extreme forms of self-denial they occasionally practice, such as vowing never to use one leg or the other, or to hold an arm

Methods – hypnotic states and ecstatic trances through ritual recitation and through such physical exertions as whirling and dancing.

Hinduism

monasticism

Officially rejects asceticism. In the Avesta, the sacred scriptures of Zoroastrianism, fasting and mortification are forbidden, but ascetics were not entirely absent even in Persia.

Zoroastrianism

religion

Aim – gain direct knowledge (ma’rifah)of God or Reality (haqq).

Sufism

Adherents of Islam observe fasting during Ramadan, however, celibacy is discouraged by Prophet Muhammad and monasticism is rejected in the Quran. Only Sufism incorporates an ascetic movement known as zuhd (self-denial).

Islam (except Sufism)

Variety of asceticism

Methods – abstaining from various normal pleasures and by enduring difficult physical tests.

Aim – bodily fitness and excellence.

Origin of asceticism

Ancient athletics

Methods – seclusion, physical discipline, control of quality and quantity of food.

Aim – testing one’s abilities during initiation into manhood or becoming a sage.

Preliterate religions

Aim - ability to act freely to choose or refuse a desired object or an act of physical pleasure; clear judgment, inner calm and freedom from suffering.

Methods - logic, dialogue and self-dialogue, meditation.

Methods - rejection of conventional manners, self-sufficiency, satire.

Stoicism

asceticism

Methods - self-sufficiency in wilderness.

Aim - a return to non-”civilized” ways of life.

Anarcho-primitivism

religion

Methods – extermination of all passions, fasting, yoga practices, meditation in difficult postures, barefoot travel, and sleeping on the floor without blankets.

Methods - neidan, or internal alchemy, is an array of esoteric doctrines and physical, mental, and spiritual practices, including vegetarianism, prohibition of alcohol.

Jainism

Aim – liberation from cycle of rebirth.

Aim – inner harmony, peace, and longevity.

Taoism

Aim – happiness, mental clarity and freedom from influences – such as wealth, fame, or power – that have no value in Nature.

Cynicism

Methods – meditation, mantras, vegetarianism, avoiding extreme austerity.

Aim – to avoid suffering and gain enlightenment and release from cycle of rebirth, or at least attain a better rebirth by gaining merit.

Buddhism

in the air for a period of months.

LIQUID LEISURE LABOUR

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the group, but in other means than the acquisition of the necessities of life.

Our social interactions are a continuous navigation through a labyrinth of institutional expectations, organizational norms and conventions. Institutions are systems of established and prevalent social rules (overt or implicit) embedded in shared habits of thought and behavior which provide them with durability, power and normative authority. The powers, not the behaviors themselves, mean that the institutions exist, where the mental representation of an institution (or its rules) are then observed and manifested through behavior. At a macro structure, the institution maintains the locus of power through its structure, practices, symbols and discourse; creating and reproducing a dominant ideology.

A spatial and psychological parallel can be drawn between the play-ground and the concept of liminality which is entwined in the pursuit of leisure. The pseudo spiritual condition associated with the spatial separation from the habitual alludes to particular spaces that sanction behaviour that is outside normative, everyday conventions. A state or place of anti-structure/anti institution in which the process opens up channels of communication to create cultural domains that transcend the limitations of gender, class, race, nationality or politics. These heterotopias-real places of ‘otherness’- effectively constitute as liminal counter-sites that interrupt the apparent continuity and normality of ordinary everyday space, whilst still being localized in the already existing reality.

If the durability of institutions stem from their ability to usefully order thought by imposing form and consistency on human activities, then labour is arguably a highly indicative behaviour through which we can observe institutional powers. Underpinned by respective ideologies; labour is a function of all institutions and is the factor that determines the shape of people’s lives and structure of society.

If we accept the classical conceptualization of leisure as time free from the obligation to labour, then the autonomy of leisure (from a structural perspective), can be conceived as a differentiation from institutional influence. ‘Free time’.

For centuries, the meaning of leisure has undergone considerable debate in theological, philosophical and medical discourses. An Aristotelian views leisure as a state of being; an attitude of mind that places value on contemplative pursuits (the highest form of leisure) where the individual finds the catharsis he needs. However, we inevitably see the emergence of how a serious consideration of work-leisure relations increases with the maturing of industrial capitalism and the introduction of labour laws and the working day. Seen in the intricate connections to numerous sectors and aspects of our ‘civilized’ societies, leisure is no longer a minor item, postscript to the major ones, but a distinct cultural entity; an entirely structurally differentiated institution in itself. By being transformed into leisure pursuits, it has become the most spectacular commodity to have appeared over the generations, and as such, has “become institutionalized, gained higher definition, become self-conscious and achieved an added legitimacy.”1 At a very fundamental level though, the codification and institutionalization of leisure goes beyond the fact that an entire leisure industry thrives, but by the way it is differentiated by possessing a definite place in the rhythm of life. Moments of the day, week, year defined as leisure time.

Thus a sharper sense of ‘free time’ is associated with the routinization of leisure; marking a shift from the annual turning of the world upside-down at Carnival to small but regular doses of daily or weekly recreation. Recreation in the literal sense of renewal, whether physical, spiritual or mental has spatial and temporal associations referring to a withdrawal from occupation- time free from the obligation of labour.

In such a dichotomy, “work and leisure are not just a conceptual couplet, twinned for the convenience of testing theories. They are experienced as a couplet, the one deriving meaning from the other.”2 Indeed, our experience of labour or leisure are inextricably linked, where the absence of either entity mutually warps and conditions our perception of the other. However, the danger of such a binary reading is its ability to render a reductive and overly functionalist understanding of leisure as a residual category of work.

SOCIAL PHENOMENON

LIQUID LEISURE The concept of ‘free time’ remains inherent in our current leisure discourse. Sociologist Chris Rojek points out that “leisure is not a consumption activity, since this is ultimately driven by the capitalist goal of ceaseless accumulation. Nor is it activity designed to distract one from the cares and predicaments of work, since this merely reinforces the domination of the work ethic by condemning leisure to a subsidiary, compensatory function.”3 In a de-differentiating world in which the things we derive pleasure and happiness from are not fixed, ‘work’ has become more ‘leisure-like’ and ‘leisure’ has become more ‘work-like’. Arguably the most pervasive element enabling exploitative office culture is the postmodern trickery of the contemporary working environment- the ‘progressive corporate culture’ heralded by the Silicon Valley powerhouses which amorphously blur the boundaries of work and play.

Slavoj Žižek argues this is a modern employment tactic used to create the illusion that our employer is our friend. He asserts that the environment of the workplace has been twisted, using architectural devices, to manipulate employees. Kitchens, ‘breakout spaces’, lounges, free food, free coffee – is a postmodern sleight of hand designed to manipulate and disarm staff. These informal spaces are political spaces of control, surveillance and manipulation.4 This postmodern transformation begins to disengage from formerly fixed spaces of production and recreation (albeit still pivoting around the axis of labour) by spatially collapsing the two domains and making obsolete a distinction between work/play. The modernist object of leisure left much to be desired in its approach to it as a programmatic activity conducted within a bounded space; co-opted, institutionalized and compartmentalized, it corrupted leisure’s very promise of escape, ‘freedom’ and liminality.

PLAY. GROUND. Play is distinct because of its locality and duration.

In its secludedness, its limitedness- it is played out within certain limits of time and place where temporary worlds are created within the ordinary world. All play moves and has its being within a play ground marked off before hand, either materially or ideally.5 It is a well-defined quality of action which is different from ‘ordinary’ life; a special form of activity, as a ‘significant form,’ as a social function and cultural factor in life. Play is not foolish. It is never a task. It is done at leisure; during ‘free time’. Play is a cathartic release that contributes to the well-being of

NADA TAYEB

Ultimately, leisure takes place in the reality of the social world where our rights to it reflect larger social, political and economic power structures- in the home and at public. Social class, age, gender, financial resources and unemployment are pertinent factors tied very closely to the opportunities and inequalities in leisure. Indeed, the symptoms are “both private and concealed within people’s homes and public and revealed in the way that a society constitutes and imagines itself, but they also have massive implications for how people experience leisure both individually and collectively.”6 To draw on the example of anti-social youth, yob and crime culture prevalent in innumerable deprived neighborhoods; the abundant structural challenges not only erode youth’s access to the more orthodox institutional leisure facilities, but are enmeshed in the emergence of a deviant realization of leisure aspirations and less tolerable forms of excitement or use of ‘free time’. Idleness, unemployment and boredom heighten criminogenic pressures and undermine other institutions that stabilize the entire social system; posing new barriers for entire communities to freely pursue leisure in their neighborhood.

Can a new leisure paradigm stabilize and justify disadvantaged youth’s way of life to a wider community where ‘free time’ is abundant and resources are scarce? Returning a playful dimension to leisure that is not associated with the acquisition of products and services can allow for spatial interventions that channel ‘free time’ in more satisfying ways than the palliative measures of learning programs, stiflingly unimaginative ‘play and informal recreation’ guidelines produced by local planning authorities or sports facilities deployed to tame the unruly masses.

If architecture remains the instrument that inscribes, reinforces and enacts structural determinants, can it be interpreted with a new syntax that indexes the twin existence of labour/leisure, but redefines their relationship by expanding the concept of a diffused leisure terrain. The finesse of the challenge lies in the ability to decentre the subject of leisure; to defamiliarise the familiar in order to find hidden nuances, distortions, contradictions and contingencies which call upon a legitimating ‘experience’ of leisure to emerge without renouncing the social world within which it exists.

FOOTNOTES 1. Seabrook, Jeremy. The Leisure Society. Oxford : Basil Blackwell, 1988. p 27.

2. Glyptis, Sue. Leisure and Unemployment. Open University Press,1989.

3. Rojek, Chris. The Labour of Leisure: The Culture of Free Time.

London: Sage, 2010. p.189.

4. http://www.businessinsider.com/slavoj-zizek-says-your-office-pingpong-table-is-oppressing-you-2012-5?IR=T 5. Huizinga, Johan. Homo ludens : a study of the play-element in culture. : London : Routledge & K. Paul, 1949.

6. Blackshaw, Tony. Leisure. Oxon: Routeledge, 2010. p10.

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Leisure is invariably associated with free time and/or used to refer to the opportunities presented by free time. In these definitions, life is compartmentalized and our leisure lives constitute just another compartment. In spite of that, it has occupied an ineffable place in our daily lives where its conceptual field abounds with ambivalence and its amorphous meaning and purpose eludes neat definition.

In order to preserve the complexity of leisure’s alloyed meaning, we should instead be asking after its use and question the function that it performs in order to reinstate its agency and centrality.

IMAGE LIST 1. SZABÓ, Sarolta, 2007, From a diary of a malfunctionuntitled (white bags).

2. KHAN, Idris, 2004, Every ... Bernd and Hilla Becher Prison Type Gasholders.

3. GOLEMBEWSKI, Michael, 2004, Portraits- Tiago Borges da Silva and Mikkel Crone Köser.

4. SCHULZE, Jack, 2006, Metal Phone Machine.

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

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THE CITY, THE SALT INSTITUTE & THE COMMONS COMMON COLLECTIVE ACTION: THE URBAN GUILDS AND COMMON LAND

AN UNCOMMON PLACE: THE CITY OF LONDON “In all social animals, including man, co-operation and the unity of a group have some foundation in instinct. This is most complete in ants and bees, which apparently are never tempted to anti-social actions and never deviate from devotion to the nest or the hive. Up to a point we may admire this unswerving devotion to public duty, but it has its drawbacks; ants and bees do not produce great works of art, or make scientific discoveries, or found religions teaching that all ants are sisters. Their social life, in fact, is mechanical, precise and static. We are willing that human life shall have an element of turbulence if thereby we can escape such evolutionary stagnation.”1 The City of London is not governed by London. It resides within its own jurisdiction, another city, separate from the rulings of Parliament and managed by the City of London Corporation. The City’s legitimate power derives from its age and traditions.

The land it sits on marks the territory of the Roman settlement Londinium, a chosen spot due to its two high hills and proximity to the River Thames and River Fleet. Its government is the “Common Council” a council not so common, made up “freemen” representing the 25 wards of The City. Their freeman status is granted only if one is a member of the London Livery Company. It is this complex web consisting of the London Liveries and their relationship in supporting the governance, autonomy and elitism of the City of London Corporation that should be once again, questioned.

This city historically was the centre of material trade, and the London Liveries were formed in response to manage these resources. Today the London Livery’s struggle resides not within trade but the campaign to remain relevant. If anything the fear of relevance is all too apparent; The Worshipful Company of Haberdasher’s website banner flashes “OUTWARD FACING” “RELEVANT TO THE 21ST CENTURY” , “FORWARD THINKING”2 . The reality is the majority if not all of these guilds are no longer directly associated to their trade or craft, many members’ occupations not remotely related to their guild and many trades or crafts are not even practiced anymore. The decline in their importance, at the start of the Industrial Revolution, which saw the last set of economic privileges stripped from the livery companies, marked their increased efforts in focusing on the charitable and philanthropic. The London Liveries are a rare phenomenon because despite their decline in relevance, their establishment through the crown and church as well as their geographical location enabled

them rights and access as well as spiritual means for gaining wealth and power. In the Medieval ages, each Livery Company was associated with a church and it was common practice for many to leave bequests to the liveries in order to secure in the hope of heaven.

These fixed assets, spanning over hundreds of years form part of the support system that has allowed the Livery Companies to survive to date. “If you have property in the Square Mile, you never ever sell” a Beadle tells me seriously. Even outside of the The City many companies have held on to their properties.

The Worshipful Company of Mercers own much of Covent Garden as well as the Royal Exchange within The City. Their annual report in 2013 reported it had granted just over £6m to charities and educational causes, but also that it had made a turnover of £18m and that its fixed assets were growing in value, to £545m (69% in property)3.

Unlike the Mercers, most guilds do not publicly publish their incomes and expenditures apart from their charitable giving which leaves us only to speculate the extents of their wealth. Rumour has it that the Worshipful Company of Girdlers own much of High Street Kensington after purchasing it when it was strawberry fields so that King James I could have strawberries and cream…

These strange sorts of myths are befitting for a city based on traditions5 700 years old. Those traditions however, along with “convivial” dinners and meetings full of expensive wine and port clash with the nature of operations of the City, the “Square Mile”, the “financial and commercial heart of Britain”4.

“PLENTY AND PROGRESS” screeches a new piece of art, placed in the centre of Guildhall Art Gallery perhaps to illustrate the strange juxtaposition with the Corporation’s interests and their anachronistic traditions. The 300,000 commuters stampede in at 9, and rush out at 5. Their companies have votes, to account for the lack of residents in this City, a mere 7000. Admission to a Livery is either through patrimony, servitude or redemption though it is common knowledge that getting into a livery is as much about how you can help them (financially) as much as they can help you. This gentleman club scenario paints the very real picture of the Liveries and City as a closed system, and the very definition of uncommon. Its power of traditional legitimate rule should be questioned: How might imposing the values of common land onto the London Liveries potentially stage the transformation of an institution experiencing “evolutionary stagnation” and what are the consequences to the land and architecture from this?

“[institutions of collective action are] institutional arrangements that are formed by groups of people in order to overcome certain common problems over an extended period of time by setting certain rules regarding access to the group (membership), use of the resources and services the group owns collectively, and management of these resources and services”5 Though closed as a system, the Liveries historically can be seen as a form of collective action, similar to the notion of common land. The root of their collectivity lay within the locality of their situation and a mutual need for action. The trade and craft guilds in London were organised in order to regulate and control the quality of manufactured and processed goods coming into and out of the City. They grew out of a common interest to govern their respective trades and formed to protect and establish rules to govern the market.

“What we call Land is an element of nature inextricably interwoven with man’s institutions. To isolate it and form a market out of it was perhaps the weirdest of all undertakings of our ancestors. Traditionally, land and labor are not separated; labor forms part of life, land remains part of nature, life and nature form an articulate whole.”6 The commons were formed from mutual agreement between the commoners and the landowner (and the land). The importance of self-regulation and abiding by non-formal but established self-organised rules ensured that the land was never over exploited so that the land’s longevity and health would continue.

A symbiotic relationship formed between the land (seasonal shifts), commoner and manor lord.

The qualities and structures of operation in terms of collective assembly are useful today in redefining our understanding and common perception of “institution” and can also give cues as to how might a new form of collective action institution create a new common domain (be it material and related to the land, or immaterial and focused within the sphere’s of knowledge and creativity). Elinor Ostrom underlined many of the features of a self-governing, selforganising institutional approach to resources7. Her argument was in opposition to Garrett’s “Tragedy of the Commons” who didn’t believe the notion of the commons were self-sustainable because of individual selfishness. Rather than starting from the assumption that the users of common resources are helpless without an outside authority intervening to protect them from themselves, she believed that individuals had the capacity to “extricate themselves from various types of dilemma situations varies from situation to situation,” . This idea, in favour for the common people and the commons can question the legitimacy of elitist operations that occur in the middle of our city yet, ones which we have no control over.

FOOTNOTES 1. Reith Lectures 1948: Authority and the Individual Bertrand Russell Lecture 1: Social Cohesion and Human Nature 2. http://www.haberdashers.co.uk 3. Mercers Company Annual review 2013 4. City of London statement in a City of London Corporation brochure 5. Homepage. Available at: http://www.collective-action.info 6. Polanyi, K.,The great transformation the political and economic origins of our time, Beacon Press, 2002 7. Ostrom, Governing the Commons, Eggertsson and Calvert, 1990 1

CHERNG-MIN TEONG

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THE CITY, THE SALT INSTITUTE, & THE COMMONS

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The City of London is an island, both geographically, politically and financially. This article questions the legitimacy of the City of London Corporation status, specifically its relationship to the London Liveries and wonders whether imposing the very opposite, a form of commons to that which is definitely uncommon can claim a part of this territory for the “commoners”.

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IMAGE LIST 1. Topping Out Cermoniously, Salter’s Hall 1976 2. Eleanor LINES, Igneous Amorphous, 2012 3. Sovay BERRIMAN, Rock Salt, 2003 4.Becky WHITMORE, Inhumation (where there is shit, there is power). 2012 5. Wealth geology, City of London, By Author 2015

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: URBAN LOGICS & INSTITUTIONAL FORMS

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CHERNG-MIN TEONG

FUZZY FUTURES Ancient Britons marked the passage of time gazing through stone circles; portals through which to view patterns in the celestial. The Egyptians set giant sun pillars throughout their cities; obelisks, monuments to Ra by which the day was divided into twelve.

Megalithic structures set in sacred landscapes, awesome stone monuments with which to mark the passage of the day and the year.

Our understanding of time today has been shaped by three significant moments in history. The first being when the Roman empire divided the day into twelve hours of darkness and twelve hours of light. The second when, in 996AC, Pope Sylvester II built the first ever mechanical clock.

Whilst modern culture lusts for the future, a European of the middle ages would have had a conception of time informed by two forces: one, that there was a consistency to the world, that things were today as they had been yesterday and as they would be tomorrow. And, second, a sacred daily rhythm, rung in by a set of chronological technologies closely guarded by the church.

Today however, such reductionism is increasingly untenable. Challenged by the development of ever more precise temporal technologies, both communication technologies racing towards the speed of light and atomic clocks that measure time so precisely that they can register changes in gravity induced by only a twenty centimeter change in their elevation. Time is known to run more slowly the higher the gravity it is exposed to, at its extreme coming to an utter stop when entering the event horizon of a black hole - and this effect is now measured in gravities anomalies across the globe. ‘Time dilation’ meaning that the clocks on our GPS satellites need to be reset every day to ‘earth time’. As our technologies become ever more precise they have started to challenge our understanding of the relationship between space and time. And as we continue our progress into the future, these effects will start to bare pressure on the realization of the world we live in.

predictions, neoliberal utopias, and accelerationist horizons, etc.,).

Be it in the growth and subsequent decline of high frequency trading, or the emergence of its antithesis in the slow moving waters of the dark pools - whether finance, capital, debt and labour, accelerate or slow, the speed of information exchange continues to colour each stage of the market’s realization. As markets continue to accelerate towards the speed of light they promise a point of either self destruction, or such a pure abstraction that they can become eternal. Like other seemingly utopian visions their vector tends to trace a path towards a somewhat a-temporal space of operation. However, when brought into reality, time (and gravity) have corrupted more than one global utopian image, and I argue will do so once again.

FINANCIA

Between the rhythm of seasonal tasks, holidays and feasts, the ringing of church bells would have provided an added tempo to the lives of their communities.

Summoning them to a daily ebb and flow of prayer and labour. A time measured with new technologies, clocks wound twice a day, and set with their hands to point at the sun in its zenith. Each church, and each bell tower having its own site-specific measure of time.

The relationships between space and time established by the ancients, and continued in one form or another by the church, would come under scrutiny during the age of enlightenment. Science and the market blurring the boundary between them; working to disrupt it at points, and further entangling it at others. The first sign of these changes would come in the development of a series of spatial measures based on the length of a pendulum with a one second swing. This measure, developed during the French Revolution in order to standardize measures across the empire’s market, would be called the metre etalon. The originator of our metre, a definition of length which was soon challenged, due to the fact that the force of gravity changes across the surface of the globe, therefore so would the length of a one second pendulum and the metre, giving lie to the notion of a smooth market, free and fair. An event, that would on reflection, be a haunting precursor to our developing notion of time today.

Whilst spatial measures were reformed in France, our means of recording time went largely unaltered, each town continuing to keep its own time. This remained true until the advent of the steam engine and the introduction of ‘railway time’ in 1840. First introduced by the UK’s Great Western Railway company, GMT was calculated from Greenwich, and was first used as a way to help timetable the national network. Where it had been that each individual village, town or city across the UK, had its own local time (with up to fifteen minutes difference from one place to another), there would now be a chosen geotemporal centre. Charles Dickens bemoaned that “there was even railway time observed in clocks, as if the sun itself had given in”, some towns resisted these changes - Oxford, Exeter and Bristol showing two minute hands on their town clocks, one set to local time, the other to Greenwich. This opposition would vanish in 1855 when The City of London’s Electric Time Company completed the task of connecting the entire rail network to a newly built electromagnetic clock situated in Greenwich. GMT thus became an established national temporal zone, a method that was soon to be extended across the globe. The earth sliced like a cake into 24 portions over which time could supposedly be smoothed out.

Today, financial institutions across London all keep their own slightly different time, and high-frequency trades have been shown to exploit the gaps. Keeping track of these ‘times’ is one of the greatest challenges for both financial institutions and regulators alike; driving the production of a complex web of infrastructures, that join the stock exchange with the atomic clocks of GPS, through data distribution points such as the Richard Rogers designed Reuters Data Centre Building. The same data centre fro which Reuters admitted releasing manufacturing data 15 milliseconds before official publication due to a clock synchronisation issue, upon which high frequency algorithms pounced instantly trading an estimated $28 million in shares.

The fine web of temporal indices that stretches through the City acts to define the beat of its production today.

Whether in the rhythm induced by the FTSE’s 15 second updates, in the millisecond vibrations of high frequency trading algorithms, or even the nanosecond humm that will emanate from the technologies of tomorrow. Within the City, a space which would have once reverberated with the tolling of ecclesiastical refrains, and after that the 24 daily beats of empire, these rhythms are now being replaced by those of a new financial time. This is likely to be further intensified with plans being drawn up to make a direct physical connection between the atomic clocks at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington and the square mile’s financial institutions. An attempt to bring temporal exactitude to the City’s institutions.

A connection that reminds us of the moment in 1855 when the City of London’s Electric Time Company connected the nation to Greenwich.

However there is yet one last fact to contend with, one which could act to change the City’s competitiveness in the global market, working to sculpt the urban fabric - London has the highest gravity of any of the world’s major financial capitals, and as such the slowest time. This suggests, that in a market where speed is by and large desired, a set of interesting questions will need to be posed by the City and its institutions. Though one can be sure that speed has been crucial to the changes that have taken place to the London Stock Exchange - from coffee house, through bounded trading floor, to its vaporization as a multi-media press platform - how will this ‘slowness’ affect its future manifestations?

Today’s markets are often represented as abstract and free floating figures; processes that bare fleeting relationship to one another, and traverse the globe at near instantaneous speeds. A world in which, since the untethering of money to material artifact, has become the domain of floating fiat currencies flickering here and there in a seemingly inaccessible ether. Yet, even with a general current of disapproval, they seem to promise the only reliable way forward; and with that encompass all imaginable futures (‘pragmatic’

RHYS WILLIAMS

from tom

RHYS WILLIAMS

THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE: URBAN LOGICS & INSTITUTIONAL FORMS

Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad whoever owns [the] soil, [it] is theirs all the way inferos [up] to Heaven and [down] to Hell ADS9

AL TIMES FUZZY FUTURES

m morrow

Our understanding of the relationship between space and time has been negotiated many times over.

Today we stand at the dawn of a new conception of how these dimensions relate. A point at which we’ll begin to understand that the speed of time changes across the globe. And where this subtle temporal variation will begin to affect the world in which we live. In this case, the question that we must ask is, can we ever arrive at a global utopia when the force of gravity, and as such the pace of time, alters across the surface of the earth? Affording an immediate nature to every place, and an undeniable sitespecificity to every “project”.

WORK IN PROGRESS 2014/2015

ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART 2014-2015